The boulder is a relic of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and was well known to Native Americans in its location on the west branch of the Ontonagon River, in what is now Victoria Reservoir.

[2] In the early 17th century, Voyageurs traversing Lake Superior heard word of the massive solid copper boulder.

[3] In 1766,[5] under the guidance of a party of Ojibwe, trader Alexander Henry the elder laid eyes on the rock, and reported that he found it to be so pure and malleable that he was able to easily remove a large piece, and estimated the boulder's weight at ten tons.

In May 1798, David Thompson recorded the following during his exploration of the "River Ontonoggan", Learning from my men that a short distance up the river there was a mass of copper, we left our canoe and proceeded on foot to it; we found it lying on a beach of limestone at the foot of a high craig of the same; it's shape round, the upper part a low convex, all worn quite smooth by the attrition of water and ice, but now lying dry.

We tried to cut a chip from it, but it was too tough for our small axe.During a geological voyage around the perimeter of Michigan in 1820, Henry Schoolcraft first reached the mouth of the Ontonagon River on June 27.

This time he discovered the boulder, that he had already bought from the local Native Americans, now belonged to a group of miners from Wisconsin, who had located the land under a permit issued directly by the Secretary of War.

In the end, the government took the boulder, but paid Eldred $5,644.93 (equivalent to $184,589 in 2023[7]) for "his time and expense in purchasing and removing the mass of native copper".

[1] In 1991 an assessment was initiated after the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community requested the return of the Ontonagon Boulder as a sacred object.

A preliminary analysis indicated that the tribe presented insufficient evidence to establish that the boulder fit the definition of a sacred object under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.